It’s already been a long day for Suzanne Eblen. The founder of Lucketts Store was up before dawn working a volunteer shift at Chilly Hollow Farm in Berryville, where she spent the wee hours of the morning picking vegetables. From there, she headed down Route 15 in Leesburg to the rustic retail empire she’s built over the past three decades.
Eblen, 65, is the chief curator of a magical shopping destination — part wonderland, part treasure hunt — filled with antique furniture, whimsical garden finds, and home décor you won’t see anywhere else. And after 29 years, she’s still loving her job.
“I’m so grateful that I always knew what my thing was, and I was able to do it,” says Eblen. “I’ve been lucky enough to have a really great life because of it.”
To Market, To Market
Eblen has long been a trailblazer in the vintage décor world, curating a dazzling mix of treasures and one-of-a-kind steals sourced from dozens of local vendors. “I don’t know what you’re looking for when you go through the front door, but you’re going to find things you never even dreamed of,” says longtime Lucketts Store customer Jonna Mendez of Reston. “I think it is a destination.”
A South Jersey native, Eblen has built a devoted following for her eclectic store as well as the Holiday House event she holds each November and December (“If you love Christmas, it’s the bomb-diggity,” she notes) and wildly popular three-day spring and fall markets. These upscale flea markets, held each May and October at the Clarke County Fairgrounds in Berryville, attract more than 200 vendors and 10,000 visitors, drawing Pinterest-loving decorators, antique enthusiasts, and interior designers alike.
“It is the biggest gig on the East Coast, for sure,” says 26-year Lucketts Store staffer and vendor Heather Staton.
With live music, food trucks, beer gardens, and an endless hunt for hidden gems, Eblen’s seasonal markets have become a true Insta-worthy, bucket-list experience.
(Tickets for the Holiday House go on sale in early September each year and sell out fast, so plan ahead for next year.)
Born with Business Sense
The entrepreneur’s business acumen showed itself early. As a girl, Eblen would spend hours in her basement, scribbling pretend receipts in old ledger books salvaged from an abandoned dairy near her home.
“It’s still my favorite thing in the whole wide world to do. I never get tired of it,” she says.
Even at Catholic school, dressed in her plaid blue dress, she couldn’t resist setting up shop.
“She’s always been a saleswoman,” says Amy Whyte, who has been Eblen’s business partner since the beginning. “She was selling pencils in kindergarten and first grade to her classmates. She would set up a little shop on her school desk and be selling at recess — it’s in her blood.”
Growing up, Eblen was drawn to what she calls “old stuff” — antiques that carried stories with them. To this day, she pays little attention to trends, preferring pieces that have soul and meaning.
“I just feel like peoples’ homes need to have a little bit of personality to them, and for whatever reason, a lot of times it’s something your grandmother gave you, or something that you have in your home with meaning,” she says.
The future business mogul attended Stockton State College (now called Stockton University) in Galloway Township, New Jersey. During her college days, she would head to auctions, load up a pickup truck with antiques for $50, and turn around and double her money at a yard sale — a clear sign of the vintage empire she was destined to build.
After college, Eblen followed her yearning to go west. In 1984, she loaded up her rusted Datsun B210 and headed to Santa Monica, California, working as a “schlub” for a pricey furniture designer. It was in California that she met an engineer named Pat; they married in 1987.
“We moved back here to raise our family,” she says, noting the couple settled in Lovettsville and had three boys. Pat started working for NASA while Suzanne investigated furniture auctions and discovered that items cost far less in Virginia than in California.
“I could see the potential,” she says. So, in 1990, they purchased an 1800s farm in Lovettsville and Eblen began redoing its barns to house her many auction finds. Then the big barn yard sales began.
“I used to have traffic jams coming from everywhere, because I believed that if I get it for $1, you’re gonna get it for $2,” she says. “I want you to have a find — I want you to have fun — just like I have.”
A Store Is Born
In March of 1996, the Eblens purchased an abandoned three-story general store on the corner of Route 15 and Lucketts Road in Leesburg.
“We found it together. She and I kind of broke into it because we were curious, and we toured it, and she was like, ‘Oh gosh, wouldn’t this be great?’” says Whyte. “She and her husband purchased the building. … It took a lot of guts to max out credit cards and financially stick it out there to buy this dilapidated building on a wing and a prayer.”
At the time, Eblen was juggling life with two young boys, ages 7 and 5 — and just weeks before the store’s grand opening in August, she welcomed her third son, Jackson.
“I just loved what I was doing so much,” she says.
Treasure Trove
From day one, the Lucketts Store stood out. Originally stocked entirely with antiques, it has evolved into a treasure trove of what Eblen calls “vintage hip” — a mix of rustic accents, eclectic décor, and stylish new pieces, to meet demand for the growing population nearby.
“We try to bridge that gap with the old and new,” she says. Traffic by the store has picked up exponentially over the decades, Eblen says, from 10,000 cars driving by each day in 1996 to about 30,000 now.
Staff say Eblen’s leadership has been the steady force behind its success.
“She is constantly consistent, but always looking for change,” says Casey McGrath, who has worked at the store for 13 years. “She never wants to get stale. She’s always like, ‘What can I do better?’”
Amy Walton is a Northern Virginia interior designer and artist who has known Eblen for 20 years. She says the store’s X factor is its founder’s heart.
“She’s clearly wildly creative and brilliant, but inside, she’s extremely kind,” says Walton. “When you go into her store, everybody’s happy — it’s a happy place.”
Staff and customers alike echo that sentiment, crediting the store, its ticketed Holiday House, and twice-yearly markets with bringing joy to the community.
“If I had a dollar for every customer over all the years who has said ‘I come here for peace,’ and ‘This is my happy place,’ I would never have to work another day in my life,” says Staton. “I don’t even know if she knows how great it is.”
Looking Forward
All three of Eblen’s sons — Wyatt, 36, Miles, 34, and Jackson, 29 — joined the family business. They work in the shop, make deliveries, and enhance the store’s online presence, because “that’s how people shop now,” she says. The Holiday House preparations are in full swing, the store continues to thrive, and plans are always in motion for the spring and fall markets.
For Eblen, that’s enough.
“As humans and in our culture, we always want more. Why? Why not just be happy?” she asks. “I’m realizing more and more every single day that I’m happy to give a place of respite to people in kind of the crazy world we live in right now. … We’re like a throwback to calm, nice things from the past. And you know what? I don’t really need any more than that.”
Feature image of Suzanne Eblen by Amie Otto
This story originally ran in our November issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
